BillCosby

A spokesman for Taleban fighters in Pakistan has welcomed the release of a well-known militant leader.

On Monday night the authorities set free Maulana Sufi Mohammad, the founder of an outlawed Islamist group that has fought in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

He was released under an agreement to renounce violence and help restore peace in the north-west valley of Swat.

Pakistan's new government is trying to deal with Islamic militancy through dialogue and development.

Sharia demand

Sufi Muhammad was released from prison hospital after nearly seven years in detention.

Map of Swat region

He was arrested in 2001 while returning from Afghanistan where he had led his poorly armed followers into battle against coalition forces.

He is the head of the Tehrik Nifaz-e-Shariat Mohammadi (TNSM) movement that demands the enforcement of Islamic law in the Swat valley.

While he was in prison his more radical son-in-law, Maulana Fazlullah, assumed control of the group and took up arms against the state.

Hundreds of people welcomed Sufi Mohammad when he returned to the TNSM headquarters on Tuesday in the district of Malakand in Swat.

He told the crown that he had "signed an agreement with the government so that we can peacefully work for the enforcement of Sharia in our area".

According to an official statement, the agreement commits the TNSM to renounce violence in the Swat valley where the army has been engaged in an intense struggle with militants.

Under one clause of the agreement, The TNSM declares that the killing of police, military or other government employees is "un-Islamic".

Negotiations over Sufi Muhammad's release began some months ago.

It is not clear, though, whether the sick and elderly man still has the authority to bring his rebellious movement into line. Some observers say that he is a spent force.

Observers predict a confrontation with his son-in-law if he tries to do so.

"We welcome his release, it is a positive development and augurs well for peace in the area," Taleban spokesman Maulvi Omar said.

The militants are also observing an unofficial ceasefire to facilitate talks.

But the BBC's Barbara Plett in Islamabad says their terms for a lasting peace are tough.

They want President Pervez Musharraf to stand down and they are demanding that the government abandon its pro-American policy and implement Islamic law in the tribal areas along the Afghan border.

They are also committed to continuing their fight against Nato in Afghanistan.

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The sprawling golf course in Kabal town, some 10km (six miles) west of Pakistan's scenic northern city of Mingora, was a major tourist attraction until some months ago.

It now serves as the camp for regular Pakistani army troops who moved into the area in July.

The camp is the last line of Pakistani defence against a resurgent local Taleban militia.

"Without these troops, the militants would have over-run Kabal town a long time ago," says Shirin Zada, a local journalist.

Even so, they have been little help in boosting the morale of the local police following bloody clashes with the militants over the weekend.

No schedules

The police are confined inside the town's main police station, where they have set up heavy barricades to guard against possible militant attacks.


These positions are manned by a contingent of the paramilitary Frontier Corps (FC) troops that moved in last week to reinforce the police ranks.

Neither the military nor the police have any patrolling schedules, increasing the sense of insecurity among government troops.

The police station head, Inspector Abdul Ghani, minces no words while explaining their plight.

"People of the area offer us no protection, so we have called in the FC," he says, brushing aside a suggestion that it is the police that protect the people from criminals, not vice versa.


There is good reason to be afraid.

Officials say Taleban militants beheaded at least eight government troops during two days of fighting over the weekend. Independent sources say the number may be twice that.

Akbar Hussain
Akbar Hussain, like most militants, is reluctant to be photographed

The fighting erupted after the bombing of an Frontier Corps truck in Mingora last week in which at least 16 troops were killed.

The government responded by sending in helicopters to bomb suspected militant positions in an area within a radius of roughly 100km just north and west of Mingora city, the capital of Swat district.

Ground troops also moved out of their bunkers to take on the militants in a number of areas.

Full strength

By Monday, however, they had retreated to their fortified positions. In Kabal, the police and the Frontier Corps troops had to retreat inside the large police station compound and build fortifications to ward off attacks by local fighters.

In sharp contrast, armed local Taleban man a check-post in full strength, barely 50 metres down the street from the police station.

"In battle, government troops are only trained to run away," remarks Akbar Hussain, the Taleban commander for Kabal region.

"We don't want to kill them because they are also Muslim, but [the country's military ruler] Gen Musharraf is using them to advance the Americans' agenda."

Motivated and armed

Mr Hussain operates out of a small compound some distance off the road, just behind the police station.

Captured munitions
Militants display munitions captured from the army

His fighters appear to be local boys, highly motivated and heavily armed. But none of them seem to have the battle-hardened looks of their counterparts in the tribal districts of Waziristan and Bajaur.

The government has accused "outsiders" of perpetrating trouble in Swat, a charge Mr Hussain dismisses.

He attributes the beheading of the troops, a hallmark of well-trained fighters linked to the Taleban and al-Qaeda, to "ordinary local people who lost their loved ones" in Islamabad's radical Red Mosque.

The government conducted a 10-day siege of the mosque in July in which more than 100 people, many of them seminary students from northern districts, were killed.

That siege sparked a wave of anti-government anger in north-western Pakistan, especially in Swat, Dir and Waziristan regions.

But the battle efficiency of Swat's militants has led many analysts to believe that non-Swati members of various militant organisations linked to the insurgency in Indian-administered Kashmir may be involved.

Recruiting centres

Swat, and the neighbouring district of Lower Dir to the west, have long served as a rear base for these well-trained militant organisations.

Several of them have been running their public contact offices and recruiting centres in and around the Lower Dir town of Timergara.

The town is just behind the hills that face troops stationed on Kabal's golf course.

Local people say the army frequently fires shells from the golf course to hit the hilltops, presumably targeting infiltrators.

And sometimes retaliatory fire comes from the hills as well, they say.

On Tuesday night, a mortar shell fired from the hills hit the house of a Kabal resident, Nadir Khan.

Ironically, people gathered at the site told the BBC that the shell was fired by the army, even though few knew for sure that any army troops were posted on the hill.

The incident suggests the government's credibility is weakening in this area, where things are often not as they seem.

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Preventive war is not war!!!!Counter-terror is not terror